The Kurdish people inhabit territory in the Middle East that includes the territory of many independent states. The Kurdish land includes parts of Iraq, Syria, and Armenia, and the Kurdish people are often the majority in cities in this region. However, the Kurds do not have a state of their own and are therefore referred to as a “stateless nation.” A “stateless nation” is a nation of people who self-identify as a common national group, but who do not have their own political state. The Jewish people were once a famous “stateless nation” in history, until the creation of Israel in 1948.

The concept of nationality can sometimes be nebulous, but within the United Kingdom, there are at least four nationalities: English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish. These four nations together make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) and Northern Ireland. In the recent independence movement, many Scottish people were campaigning for an independent Scottish national state, completely separate from England and the rest of Britain. The Scots were seeking “self-determination,” the right to determine the political character and direction of their own nation.

Irredentism is a political movement that is strongly tied to nationalism. It is a political movement that intends to reunite a nation or reclaim a lost territory. This was a particularly powerful force in European history from 1850 to 1945, during the height of European nationalist fervor.

The Falkland Islands (or Las Malvinas, as they are known in Argentina) are part of the dwindling remains of the British Empire. The islands are physically located a few hundred miles off the Argentinean coastline and are thus logically claimed by the Argentinian government. In the early 1980s, Argentina declared war on the United Kingdom in an attempt to “reclaim” the Falkland Islands. Any attempt to “reclaim lost territory for a nation” is known as “irredentism.”

“Manifest Destiny” was a prevailing American ideological myth throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It stated that the United States had an inevitable destiny to expand continually westward until it controled the whole of the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.

A state with more than one center of activity is a multicore state, identifiable from the meaning of the word "multicore"- "multi" (many) and "core" (center).

The Atlantic Triangular Trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries featured the transportation of trinkets from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the Caribbean, molasses from the Caribbean to Europe, and rum from New England to Europe. The trade did not feature the transportation of tobacco from Europe to the Americas. Rather, tobacco was transported from the Americas, particularly from the American colonies, to Europe.

Colonialism is when a more powerful country attempts to assert its power and influence over a weaker country. Self-determination is the process by which a country determines its own statehood and forms its own allegiances and governments. Sovereignty is the authority of a state to govern itself. Diffusion is the spreading of culture from one area to another. Irredentism refers to the belief that territory outside a given state should be made part of the state due to a large amount of people living there of the same ethnicity as live in the state in question or due to the state having historically been in possession of the territory.

The term “Neo-colonialism” has emerged in recent years to refer to the continued economic dependence of colonies on their former occupiers. The implication of the term is that, although the colonial powers no longer exert political or militaristic control over the former colonies, they are still able to control the population of these countries to variable degrees through economic and cultural processes.

Algeria was once a major colony of France and was under French control until the 1960s. Despite having achieved independence half a century ago the economy of Algeria remains closely tied to the economy of France. Whilst Algeria accounts for a little over one-percent of French trade (making it relatively insignificant to France), France accounts for a quarter of Algerian trade (making it extremely significant to Algeria). This form of economic control over a former colony is known as “Neo-colonialism.”